Vignettes from Apollo 13 Related to Decision Making

Here are more Apollo 13 vignettes that didn't make the cut for Stand Back and Deliver.

Less than two days into the flight of Apollo 13, the crew experiences a major malfunction in the service module. Mission control quickly assesses the situation and realizes that their purpose has changed. No longer are they focused on landing two of the astronauts on the moon, they are now solely focused on getting all three astronauts safely back to earth. That also means that there is a lot of activities originally planned for this mission that they were simply no longer going to do. This was dramatized particularly well in the movie Apollo 13 when Ed Harris playing Gene Krantz, one of the flight directors, tosses the flight plan aside, “I want you all to forget the flight plan. From this moment on, we are improvising a new mission.” The team then proceeded to discuss what they were and were not going to do. Most of the activities surrounded the bare minimum activities to get the astronauts safely home. The level of activity was also restricted through a consideration of what risks they faced, for example choosing to sling shot around the moon in a “free return trajectory” instead of firing up the main service module engine to immediately turn around because the did not know if the service module engine would work. They also had to make a series of assumptions based on the actual capabilities of the spacecraft, paying attention to what it was designed to do, but realizing they had to test it’s limits. And finally, they weighed the various constraints on resources and time that faced the astronauts to decide what activities the astronauts could and should do.

During the Apollo 13 mission, the Mission Control faced the when do we do things decision point several times. Once it was realized that the spacecraft had been damaged, the normal flight plan, which in itself was a prioritized list of activities, gave way to a new list of activities. The first thing to do was get the crew to safety within the spacecraft itself. With the available oxygen and power quickly disappearing in the command module, the crew had to move themselves into the lunar module to use it as a lifeboat. Next activity, get the crew on the appropriate trajectory to return home. After that, Mission Control had to work out a means for using the lithium hydroxide filters from the command module in the lunar module, a classic square peg in a round hole problem. Throughout the mission, Mission Control and the crew kept a keen eye on all of the activities that needed to be done and quickly determined the priority of each, with an obvious understanding that it did no good to get the spacecraft back to earth if there was not enough oxygen, water, or power, or too much Carbon Dioxide to keep the crew alive.

Teams will often utilize a value model without realizing it. Gene Krantz and the rest of the ground crew and astronauts for the Apollo 13 mission gave little thought to the concept of a Value Model, but they were in fact utilizing one. They started out with the purpose of landing men on the moon. With some pretty substantial costs, some soft benefits of reinforcing the United States’ domination of space and the opportunity to do additional exploration of the moon’s surface. Then the considerations changed, which changed the value they sought from the mission, and thereby changed the decisions that they made.

Your teams most likely do not have the life and death consequences or the public exposure experience by the Apollo 13 mission, but they can still utilize this model to make informed decisions about the right things to do and when to do them.

The close alignment of the Apollo program’s purpose to the country’s strategy at the time was a key to it’s success in the face of so many odds. To see what happens when that compelling tie between purpose and strategy disappears one only has to look at the space program since those heady days in 1969 and 1970. Starting with the end of the Apollo program, once the USSR had been beaten, landing on the moon became almost routine, people began to loose interest, and the value derived from such missions began to fade. In fact the last couple of missions of a program designed, at least subconsciously, to beat the Soviet Union to the moon ended up cooperating them in joint space missions that added no real value other than to point out that the two countries could actually cooperate on something if they set their mind to it.

The shuttle program has proven unable to capture the imagination of the American public, or perhaps more importantly, Congress. The program started out seeking a way to provide reliable, convenient, regular trips to space using a reusable spacecraft. But when the realities of the program hit and NASA found that the shuttle could not economically provide regular or reliable trips to space, other purposes were sought out for the shuttle. Much in the way that some projects come about as solutions looking for problems, the shuttle was bounced from one possible use to another, until recently when NASA made the decision to seek the moon and mars again, and to ride the horse that brought them here

As the comparison between the Apollo and Space Shuttle programs shows, purpose alignment plays an important role in deciding whether an activity is worth pursuing.

Thinking back to the Apollo 13 mission again, the mission controllers and astronauts were facing some definite considerations when it came to making decisions about the actions to take in the mission. The mission itself, even before the oxygen tank explosion, was inherently risky given the extreme environment of space thru which the crew was flying. They also faced some very clear constraints in the form of oxygen, potable water, power, physical space, and materials with which to operate. They also had to factor in several assumptions that were made designing the Apollo craft, and had to make additional assumptions as plans were developed to bring the astronauts safely home.

Perhaps one of the most compelling aspects of the Apollo 13 mission is how these considerations changed throughout the mission. The risks that were present and known at the beginning of the mission were different, some having come to fruition, and new ones being discovered as a result of the events of the mission. The astronauts faced a risk of electrocution when trying to power up the command module because of all the condensation that occurred in the module while it was powered down for several days. The constraints placed on the astronauts changed dramatically when Oxygen Tank #2 exploded a couple of days into the mission. They no longer had sufficient power to stay in the command module, they were restricted to drinking 5oz of water a day, and they were limited to roughly 12 amps of power for most of the trip back from the moon, which is less power than what a typical household vacuum uses. All of these changes impacted the decision making process of the ground crew and astronauts, and also impacted the idea of what was considered successful and valuable.

Friendship 7 and Real Options

We face a lot of decisions in the course of a project. One thing we often don't put much thought to is the appropriate time to actually make the decision. A case where the time to decide was quite clear occurred on the flight of Friendship 7, John Glenn’s Mercury flight in February of 1962. The flight was planned for three orbits. At the end of the first orbit, Mission Control was just about to patch John F. Kennedy through to John Glenn when Mission Control received a “Segment 51” warning and John Glenn began having altitude control problems. Mission Control told the President that they were a little busy at the moment and would have to call him back. The team then turned to figuring out what Segment 51 indicated.

Segment 51 is meant to indicate that the landing bag had deployed. The landing bag is a rubber bag that inflated on the Mercury capsule following reentry which prevented the capsule from sinking when it landed in the ocean for recovery. The landing bag was situated behind the heat shield which is what protected the Mercury capsule from the intense heat of reentry. If the landing bag had truly deployed, that also meant that the heat shield had been pried loose from the capsule, which was not a good thing for John Glenn. Basically it meant that if they were to believe what the data was telling them, the Mercury Capsule could burn up during reentry.

Mission Control immediately began reviewing their options. As it turned out, the Mercury Capsule had a retropack strapped on to the bottom of the capsule that fired three rockets to slow the capsule into a reentry velocity and then was jettisoned before the capsule entered the atmosphere. The retropack was attached to the capsule by three metal straps and if left on would theoretically hold the heat shield on during the crucial point of reentry. But Mission Control was not sure if the retropack burning up would also cause damage to the heat shield. They also weren’t sure whether the Segment 51 alert was actually valid. Some on the team thought the issue was actually an electrical issue, basically a false alarm.

With two orbits left, Mission Control began a series of activities at once. Some controllers began working to determine tests that they could perform to determine whether the indicator was an electrical issue or if the heat shield had actually dislodged. Others started working trying to figure out what would happen if the retropack stayed attached to the capsule, and still others were figuring out how the reentry procedures needed to change if in fact they decided to leave the retropack on. All the while, no decisions had been made whether to leave the retropack on, Mission Control in fact had two more orbits to figure that out, and they were using every bit of that time to explore their options, and gather their information to help make their decision.

Chris Kraft, the flight director for the mission was convinced that the problem was an electrical issue, and stalled making the decision to leave the retropack on until the last moment so that he could have as much information as possible:

“Kraft was still holding out until the last moment, so that he had a complete understanding of the final instructions before he radioed up to John Glenn. The mission was turning into a horse race. Kraft wanted answers from one final test to be performed over Hawaii before he turned the discussion to the entry procedure modifications.” Failure is Not an Option p.74

Finally after hearing that the retropack rockets fired and were not a risk to explode during reentry, Walter Williams, the Operations Director and Kraft’s boss made the decision to leave the retropack on at the point in time where Mission Control and John Glenn had enough time to alter the reentry procedure to not jettison the retropack

When Glenn reentered the atmosphere, the retropack burned up, followed by the heat shield sufficiently protecting Glenn from the heat of reentry. After Glenn landed and analysis was done on the recovered capture, it was determined that the Segment 51 reading was invalid.

This story about Glenn’s first orbital flight shows the power of real options, in today’s world of uncertainty and complexity. We do not always know the answers, but by knowing what information would be helpful for making a decision, and having a fairly good idea of how long we have to make that decision, we can be much better prepared to decide at the right time.

A Successful Failure

I am in the process of writing a book titled Stand Back and Deliver with my partners in Accelinnova. As we go through the editing process, some of the stories I originally put in my chapter draft on making value based decisions didn't make the final cut. I still am personally attached to the stories, so I thought I would keep them some place. Here's my take on Apollo 13 as an example of the importance of purpose to the success of projects.

On May 25, 1961 President John F. Kennedy addressed a joint session of Congress and announced the goal of landing a man on the moon before the end of the 1960’s:

“First, I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him back safely to the earth. No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish”

On July 20, 1969 JFK’s vision was realized when Neil Armstrong, during the Apollo 11 mission, steeped out of the Lunar Module and became the first human being to step foot on some celestial object other than the Earth.

On April 11, 1970 at 1:13 PM CST (13:13), the Apollo 13 mission launched aiming to be the third Apollo mission to land men on the moon. The purpose of the mission at the time of launch was to land two members of the three man crew of James A. Lovell Jr., John L. Swigert, Jr. and Fred W. Haise, Jr. in the Fra Mauro area of the moon and return all three safely to earth.

At 9:08 PM on April 13, 1970, the purpose of the mission changed when a standard procedure intended to keep liquid oxygen in Oxygen Tank #2 from getting slushy resulted in an explosion that debilitated Oxygen Tank #2 and Oxygen Tank #1. The explosion resulted in a loss of oxygen and power for the command module. The crew was able to use the attached Lunar Module as a “lifeboat”, however they were stretching the design capabilities of the Lunar Module well beyond it’s limits and caused a series of challenges that the crew in the spaceship and on the ground had to overcome. These challenges included available electricity, potable water, removal of carbon dioxide, navigating the lunar module, and lack of heat (mainly due to power concerns).

On April 17, 1970 through the heroic efforts of countless engineers and mission controllers on the ground, Lovell, Swigert, and Haise landed safely back on the Earth. The mission was termed a “Successful Failure” because while the mission did not land two men on the Moon, it did manage to return all three astronauts safely back to Earth regardless of the multitude of challenges that the crew faced.

The Apollo 13 mission is an excellent example of how the perceived value delivered by an activity is impacted by changing conditions. At the beginning of the mission, simply sending three men around the moon and back to earth would have been considered a miserable failure. But that was assuming that the ship would be in excellent working order. Two days into the mission, that assumption no longer held true, mainly due to a risk that no one at the time foresaw. As a result, the purpose of the mission changed, the crew took a second look at all of their assumptions, rethought their constraints, and delivered value based on the new purpose of the mission – bringing three astronauts safely back on the deck of the rescue ship.

The Familiar vs the Comfortable

Reading through the Scrum Development list this morning, Alistair Cockburn and George Dinwiddie pointed out a great quote from Virginia Satir that I had not heard before, but rings true in many ways.

Alistair wrote:
Virginia Satir wrote words to the effect of, "When give a choice between the familiar and the comfortable, they more often than not choose the familiar."

George replied:
Exactly! Virginia Satir: "Familiarity exerts a powerful pull. What we have observed and experienced day after day exerts a powerful influence. Most people will choose the familiar, even though uncomfortable, over the unfamiliar, because of that power." (from The New Peoplemaking, ISBN:0831400706, pp. 144-145)

Something to ponder when working on helping teams change.

Agile Politics?

I admit it. I have become a political junkie over the past month. It was bound to happen I guess, living in Iowa home of the country's first caucus, and seeing first hand the excitement being generated by this election cycle's slate of candidates.

As a result of becoming a politics addict, I have taken to listening to the POTUS 08 channel on XM Radio during most of the day. It's a great channel because not only do you get to keep up on what all of the candidates are doing, but you get to hear the speeches that they and their surrogates are giving, and perhaps more relevant for application to projects and business in general, you get to hear about how the process of elections work, and from this you can glean some information that is very helpful in other pursuits.

This morning while driving into work, there was a segment focused on the strategy of elections, and the commentators were talking to a member of the Hillary Clinton campaign. Low and behold, the word "agile" came up in reference to the approach that campaign has been taking to last several weeks. You see with the way the early race has been structured, with Iowa on January 3, New Hampshire a few days after that, then South Carolina, and then Nevada (Michigan and Florida happened in there also, but didn't provide any delegates - yet). The person from the Clinton Campaign (I unfortunately can't remember her name) commented that they have actually been running a series of mini campaigns, dare I say iterations, between each election. Each state has different demographics and "electoral math" so require different emphasis and different strategies as far as where to focus and what to focus on. I have no doubt the core beliefs being addressed in these campaigns was the same, but the points of emphasis and the manner in which they were expressed were different to appeal to the relevant audience.

I like to describe agile leadership in terms of seven characteristics: Collaborate, Iterate, Serve The Team, Consider Context, Practice Excellence, Reflect and Adapt, and Deliver Value. The example I described above beautifully illustrates the use and interdependence of two of those characteristics: Iterate and Reflect and Adapt. The Clinton campaign made the choice to focus on the next primary or caucus (the sports metaphor of one game at a time) and determine their approach, their points of emphasis, and the places they were going to speak, based on the current status of the race, and things that have happened in the future. You also have seen how they have adjusted the context in which they shared their message between the different contests. After a third place showing in Iowa, they went on the attack in order to try and regain some momentum, which happened in New Hampshire, which they did. Seeing that work, they ratcheted up some more going into South Carolina, which drew some criticism, and so now you see the adjustment again going into Super Tuesday. Your thoughts about the message and the messenger aside, this is a very clear example of how looking at an endeavor as a series of smaller interim endeavors with the ability to reflect on what has come before and the current state of things in order to change your approach going forward can be very effective when you work in a dynamic and changing environment.

Reflection and adaptation make using an iterative approach that much more effective, because it provides information to help you adjust your approach. Without reflection and adaption, following an iterative approach just means you are technically insane - doing the same thing over and over again and hoping for different results. On the flip side, reflecting and trying to adopt when following a non iterative approach can be somewhat helpful, but it becomes difficult to decide when to pause and reflect, and often times even if you do identify things you could do differently, you may not have the opportunity to try those things out in order to aid the current effort.

I guess the key thing to take from all of this is that agility isn't so much a methodology as it is a way of thinking and approaching the work of teams. It may have been given a name by those in the software development community, but that doesn't mean it isn't applicable in a lot of other settings.

Analysis Does Not Have to Mean Paralysis

Back in November in Iowa Biz there was a blog entry titled Please Make A Decision. The basic premise of the post was a call to action to actually make a decision and stop suffering from "analysis paralysis. On the surface, pretty good advice. But dig a little deeper, and that post is really encouraging people to follow their typical human distaste for uncertainty and make a decision without the benefit of the relevant information. So can there be a middle ground?

You bet. It is neatly summed up by the concept of Real Options, described neatly by my friend Chris Matts with these three simple points:

• Options have value.
• Options expire.
• Never commit early unless you know why.

Said another way, it's okay to defer making a decision in order to gather as much relevant information as possible as long as you make the decision before the value you can derive from the various options starts to decrease or goes away all together. Often when people suffer from Analysis Paralysis, what they have really done is delayed making a decision past the expiration date of the option. It's about gathering the right amount of information to make the appropriate decision, but not spending so much time on information gathering that you loose the opportunity to gain value from the decision.

Good Blog Post on TDD for Databases

Gojko Adzic presented at XPDay 2007 about his experiences with Test Driven Development in a heavily database focused legacy application. He then posted his experience report on this blog post

I have always been a believer in experience being the best teacher, so am always happy to pass along interesting descriptions of people's experiences combining the somewhat disparate worlds of agile software development and database development.